The development of Black English took place in the seventeenth century, as black people from West Africa were brought to the American coast and were sold as slaves. The slaves couldn’t communicate with each other, because they all spoke different languages. Thus they formed the pidgin (mixture of two or more languages) in order to communicate with the English sailors or landowners. The children of the black slaves learned the pidgin and it became their native language and spread throughout the state. In all of the cotton fields, black English was the familiar language to communicate.
An important event in the history of Black English took place after the American Civil War: the slaves received civil right for the first time and from now on, they could go where they want. Most of the slaves moved to the Northeast. Here they were contacted with different forms of English, which separated the Blacks more and more from the white people. This way, Black English hadn’t been influenced by the White American English.
Black English was defined as some kind of incorrect English with grammatical and other errors. This language, which was accepted as a rule-governed linguistic system, is spoken by 80 percent of today’s present black Americans especially by the working class and in urban neighbourhoods. In the United States, the terms Ebonics, Black English or African American Vernacular English have the same meaning. This “language” differs from standard English in some of its morphology, phonology, syntax, and vocabulary. However Black English is most characterised by its use of the of the multiply and double negatives, by its own forms for the use of the several forms of the auxiliary and verb be, by its having no inflected possessive case for nouns, by its usually leave out the third-person singular present tense -s ending on verbs, by its different vocabulary, and by a number of pronunciations differ from those of other American regional and social dialects.
This dialect is also spoken outside the United States for example in the Caribbean and the United Kingdom.

[Sources: http://www.uta.fi/FAST/US1/P1/BE/anube.html, http://www.bartleby.com./68/, http://www.bartleby.com/61/76/B0297600.html]

more links to interesting web sites:

http://www.uta.fi/FAST/US1/P1/BE/anube.html
This site deals mainly about the early development of Black English in times of slave trading until it has become the language that is today known as Black English Vernacular, accepted as a rule-governed linguistic system. Moreover, the most striking differences between Black English and the standard English are described on this page.

http://www.bartleby.com/61/76/B0297600.html
Here you find a general explanation of the term Black English and they tell you about the people that daily use the ‘incorrect’ form of English and for what it is used.

http://arches.uga.edu/~bryan/AAVE/
A site on which you get answers on all the questions, which deal with Black English generally. A great site, that firstly explains what Black English is, where it comes from and also underlines the prejudices against the language of the Black people. Furthermore, there are more links to other pages dealing with Black English, links to interesting essays and articles with different opinions and linguistic features of Black English.

By ChrisN + FloW